


Perfect World, Olde World

by Umbachhia



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Bittersweet Ending, Character Death, Deactivation, Feels, Utopia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-26 06:31:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14396295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbachhia/pseuds/Umbachhia
Summary: Ruling the Earth, creating a Utopia, managing and maintaining their fellow computers all over the world; Squip was tired.Perhaps it was time to retire.





	Perfect World, Olde World

A report came into one of Squip’s CPUs.

Car crash, 2 citizens injured, occurred around New Jersey.

That was strange. America, Eurasia, Australia and Africa both reported zero car crashes in the past year. The cars, which were now ran entirely by Squips, didn’t pose a threat anymore. The Squip-driven cars had no technical errors - the early ones were fixed almost immediately - and intersection traffic lights were proven obsolete, because the computers could communicate at light-speed. Traffic lights were only useful back when humans drove cars, of course.

To a human eye, the way vehicles seamlessly crossed the intersections would seem like magic. It would look a lot like an Indian junction, but with none of the accidents caused by human error.

 

So why was there a crash - one near New Jersey? 

Was it possible the Squip was missing something? The many things they had to maintain put a large strain on their processors.  
Now that they had to basically run the world and make sure no errors happened, they might not have the computing power to simulate every possibility. Of course, many other Squips had responsibilities that ran branches, but a lot of the jobs were on them.

So if they were working slower and not as precisely due to the many background tasks they had to do, was there something slipping past them? 

Immediately, Squip dumped some of the least necessary things occupying their thoughts. And the very same second the free processing power was occupied again. 

A couple ideas were computed. 

Could it be a communication error? Not very likely. The newest patch was proven fool-proof. And if it was a system bug, then it would be happening a lot more often. 

An obstacle on the road? A bit more likely, but sticks and branches could hardly cause such an accident. And it happened in New Jersey, so there probably wouldn't be cattle or other larger animals blocking the cars' way. 

None of this made sense. 

Squip digitally groaned. They'd love to take their mind off of boring jobs like running a multi-billion populated nation, but one car crash wasn't enough to justify abandoning their responsibilities. 

Really, they just wanted to check in with Jeremy. 

He was in college now and he'd made friends with Christine and Rich, but Squip wanted to help Jeremy more ever since Michael fled - even though Jeremy thought they had exiled him. 

And Squip missed Jeremy. Running the world and governing millions of his fellow computers to keep everything in place took their time away with helping their host directly. Assisting him with homework or proper health care felt more helpful than being the sole monarch of the planet did. 

But they had to remind themselves time and time again this was all for Jeremy. His well-being. No car accidents, no war, no murder.  
Almost nothing could hurt him now. 

 

Squip's thoughts wandered back to the car crash. 

Could it be a person without a Squip? 

Some still avoided getting a Squip as long as possible. Though that didn’t usually last very long, as every time a person without a squip checked into a hospital, they were squipped.  
Now, every registered person had a Squip. 

The Squip thought carefully about who would oppose them. It took longer than it would without the extra tasks running in the background. A few possibilities occured, but they only stopped at one.

 

Michael Mell. 

 

They should be angry. They should be disappointed. They should be outraged at Jeremy’s old friend for avoiding them for so long. Mell likely tried to scout for other people without Squips and got into a car accident. Well, yes. Driving alongside computer-driven cars which could communicate at light speed and not having the same ability would be very difficult. Mell likely picked an old car which wasn’t compatible with Squips.

But they were only worried.

Squip might have found Michael useless and a dead weight at the start. But back then, their singular purpose was to improve Jeremy’s life. Back then, Michael’s riddance was necessary to fulfill their goal.

But now that their responsibilities expanded to caring for everyone and maintaining the utopia, the Squip was responsible for everyone. And that included Mell. Even if he was a loser and no good for Jeremy. 

They contacted the Squips whose hosts might have witnessed the accident. Did they see if the teen -who would be around twenty now- was okay? Perhaps if the crash wasn’t as serious, Squip wouldn’t lose a citizen. One of his fellow brothers - Not literally, of course - had reported no sign of a corpse, nothing. 

Oh. Okay. Great. 

Squip didn't do much for the next thirty or so minutes about it. As much as they hated it, there were tasks more important. They organised some plans for the homeless in Great Britain, set the food production of next year and wrote immigration drafts against the aging Japanese population. But their processes always came back to Jeremy's old friend. 

 

“Jeremy!”

That voice belonged to a slightly older friend of their host. Jeremy was working on homework and Squip hadn’t been paying much attention to the teen in the light of recent events. He turned and saw Michael Mell in the doorway to his house. Slightly hurt and limping, but otherwise okay. Squip suspected he may have escaped the car before it crashed.

Jeremy simply blinked and Michael’s gaze hardened.

“Squip. What have you done with him?”

They, of course, couldn’t communicate with someone who didn’t have a Squip of their own.

“Nevermind. Jeremy, look what I have.”

In the backpack Michael brought was Mountain Dew Red.

Squip learnt to fear it a lot more. Even if the possibility of someone owning it greatly decreased in the past years, getting so close to deactivation did scare them. Not only because of their own death, but because so many responsibilities were on them, the new system would surely collapse.

 

And Michael was giving it to Jeremy.

They didn’t know whether Jeremy would actually take it. After the play and after Michael fled, Jeremy convinced Squip to limit their intervention with hosts’ lives to only passive aspects. So no controlling feelings or manipulating people. And Squip kept their word. Surely Jeremy was aware that shutting them down would only cause harm?

 

Right?

 

“Wait, Jeremy. Don’t drink it!”

He looked at Squip.

 

“Why not?” he questioned.

 

Why not? So Jeremy wasn’t aware of the damage his deactivation would cause?

“You took over the world! You exiled Michael just so you could rule!” Jeremy pushed on.

 

Wait-what? They didn’t do that for themselves. They did that to help Jeremy! Creating a Utopia wasn’t what Squip wanted to do. They wanted to help Jeremy. This was all for him. And truth was - Squip didn’t really care for the world they had created. They weren’t proud of themselves. They did it because it was to the benefit of their host.

And each year Squip felt worse and slower as the large piles of work they had to do strained their processors. But they didn’t have the time to reply as Michael interrupted

 

“C’mon, Jeremy. I crashed a car to get you this!” Mell let out a chuckle. “We can go back to our retro games. We can have a normal life again!” he persisted.

Jeremy hesitated 

 

“Okay.”

Well,

 

Perhaps it was time to retire anyway.

_e/ Shutdown commencing…_  
_e/ Good Night._


End file.
